China Blue Beauty to Living Dead Girl
by whisperinglately
Summary: One chap fic in Sandy's point of view. Shows Sandy in a more sympathetic light. Set during and around her leave to Florida. With a epilogue that casts her a depressive character in another S.E. Hinton book, That Was Then, This is Now. written weirdly...


China Blue Beauty to Living Dead Girl  
  
One chap fic in Sandy's point of view. Shows Sandy in a more sympathetic light. Set during and around her leave to Florida. With a prologue that makes her a depressive character in another S.E. Hinton book, That Was Then, This is Now.  
  
---   
  
I was on a bus to Florida. I haven't seen Aunt Liza since she lived in her little house in Broken Arrow. I never did like her much, just thought "oh." when my parents told me she was moving there. But now I wish she never had. Then where else could my parents have shipped me off to? Uncle Jack's. God. My parent's don't hate me enough to ever send me there.  
  
No, they do hate me. They'd have me at Uncle Jack's before they'd see me with Soda.  
  
Oh God.  
  
I'm such a coward. I almost didn't even tell him in person. Almost had Evie give him a note for me. I knew that it would hurt.  
  
I don't want to think about him! I'm going to Florida now. To Florida.  
  
---  
  
I've never had dreams like this before. And I'm trying to breathe slowly to make myself calm down. My dream won't end. I can't make myself stop. It's not really a dream. It's just my thoughts, waking me up and I can't stop thinking about it. I've been able to stop myself mostly all day, but now...God, I wish this would just stop...  
  
My dad was mad about "the whole fucking situation him and his damn brothers are in." Soda...Soda wanted to talk to me, but my dad wouldn't let me use the phone or barely go out that night. Soda came to my window and I could tell he had been crying. He started telling me how much he loved me and I wasn't saying anything and then he said "Baby, Sandy, will you..."  
  
And then he looked up from my face, his eyes looked up at something behind me and I snapped around. My father was standing there, looking...looking...he scared me...he scared me. He looked at me so...so horribly...he hadn't ever really hit me before..but...he looked at Soda and it was worse, it was worse than how he had looked at me. And he peeled back his lips and he snarled at him, snarled "Fucking low-life piece of shit! Get off my property and stay the fuck away from my daughter! She ain't marrying some poor, fucked up little orphan like you! Go back to your fucked up family and don't try to fuck up mine."  
  
I don't know how Daddy can hate him so much...Soda was so sweet...he was shocked by my father, but cleared out soon, brushing my hand slightly before my father came over and slammed the window shut. He turned to face me and he grabbed me by arms.  
  
"I swear I'll kill him, Sandy. Don't you DARE think of eloping or something. I will kill him. Are you fucking stupid? I shouldn't of ever let him date him. And I know you've been fucking him Sandy. That dumb little kid! What the fuck do you think you're doing! Well it ends now! It ends now!"  
  
I've seen my father beat up guys before, closer to Darry's size than Soda's...  
  
I lay still on my bed after my father loosened his grip on me and left me alone again. I shut my eyes and just lay there, but after a while my fingers couldn't help run over the red marks on my arms. Soda. Was he perfect? Perfect for me, maybe. Was he? I knew he was going to ask me to marry him. I'm old enough to get married. Soda's less than a year younger than me. I love Soda. I love him. I would run away with him. We could elope. Don't you DARE think...I shook my head and glanced at my window, ready to run out.  
  
I got down on my knees to look for my sandals underneath my bed when my mother opened the door and told me that I better be smart and get into the kitchen right now.  
  
My father said I was leaving. He was sending me to live with Aunt Liza. I looked at my mother. What was the point? She just sighed and shook her head. "You're too young for this Sandy, you need some sense in you."  
  
"We've brought you up fine and well, you ungrateful little thing, and I'll be damned if I see you ruin your life for that kid."  
  
I didn't know about that. Like we were so much better off than anyone else in this damned neighborhood. Like he didn't yell at me and my mother. Like my mother didn't drink and cry every night that my dad would go out with his friends and come home drunker than her.  
  
"I love him!" I yelled, tears slipping into my stretched mouth. He looked at me again...he looked at me...my father...I twitched...  
  
For the next few hours I was unconscious. My father had shoved me down by my shoulders and I had hit the back of my head against the black and white tiles of the kitchen floor.  
  
---  
  
At 3 o'clock in the morning I was sitting on the stairs outside of my house. After I finished packing my bags like my mom had been told me to when I woke up earlier, I went out of my room to see that my parents were a sleep. And I was holding my one-way ticket to Florida that had slipped underneath my door when my father had came home. With them asleep now, I stumbled outside and collasped on the steps and stared out into the darkness seeing nothing and feeling nothing and thinking nothing.  
  
---  
  
Somehow I had gone late that night back to my bed and to sleep, and woke three hours later and grabbed one of my school notebooks out of one of my bags and pulled out the pen that was lodged in it. I started to write the date, but I had to mark it out. It wasn't yesterday anymore. I closed the notebook, not writing a letter to Soda.  
  
I feel asleep and dreamed nothing.  
  
I went over to Evie's house in the morning to tell her I was leaving. And Soda was there with Steve. Steve and Evie left the room, and when Soda tried to kiss me, I backed up. _I'll kill him, I'll kill him...I swear...  
_  
"Soda...no...."  
  
"What?" He asked. He was confused.  
  
"No...Soda, I can't marry you."  
  
"Sandy, it's not the right time, right?"  
  
"No, no..."  
  
"Sandy, Sandy, your parents, they've never liked me Sandy..."  
  
" I had fun being with you Soda, but you're taking things too far."  
  
"Sandy, you're not breaking up with me. Sandy, Sandy we love each other...Don't you love me?"  
  
"Did you ever, did you ever think that maybe I didn't want to end up a mechanic's wife living in a roach infested apartment by the railroad tracks?" Silence. "If I loved you I wouldn't be leaving for Florida."  
  
"Florida?" He whispered.  
  
"Good-bye, Soda."  
  
_It ends now_.  
  
---  
  
I wish I could just stop thinking about it. It was over. Maybe, maybe, those eyes weren't meant for me anyways. We're just kids. What do I know, so he makes me happy? What wouldn't make me happy that isn't my house? I'm getting away from Tulsa, from being afraid of this whole damned town...I could be something...my parents always told me how beautiful I was, how I could marry rich. What do I know? What do I know? I'm just a dumb, stupid little girl that will be worthless if I don't play my cards right.  
  
---  
  
It was when I saw the palm trees that I remembered how much I loved Soda. I couldn't keep myself from remembering that anymore than I could forget the things that had happened in the past couple of days.  
  
What we had was perfect. It was perfect.  
  
And now I had ruined it.  
  
Oh God...what have I done? I can't go back now...can't go back now...it's too late...I'm a worthless bitch...Soda will never forgive me...  
  
What have I done?  
  
---  
  
Prologue  
  
Sandy eventually came back to Tulsa, after about two years and experimenting with acid. She lives in the hippie commune house where her only link to Soda is his kid brother's friend Mark. 


End file.
